Researchers pin hopes on Elvin platform

By Sue CantApril 9 2002
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A real-time messaging and Web search platform could prove a billion-dollar breakthrough for Australia in the global software market, the chief executive of the Distributed Systems Technology Centre, David Barbagallo, says.

The centre is a federally funded Cooperative Research Centre based in Queensland. Last year it created a successful spin-off, network security company, Wedgetail Communications, and now has high hopes for its latest software innovation, Elvin.

"We really see Elvin as a significant global opportunity, the success of which could be worth hundreds of millions, possibly even billions, because of our belief that it will be pervasive," Barbagallo says.

The software, in development for the past six years, has been licensed to the United States Defence Department, and a US network start-up and has attracted the attention of companies such as Boeing.

It has also been licensed to stockmarket software company, Global Banking and Securities Transactions, formerly Star Systems, which plans to roll out applications using Elvin to about 80 per cent of stockbrokers in the next year. More than half the country's stockbrokers use Global's online trading system, SharesLive.");document.write("

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Elvin allows users to receive real-time messages with information they have selected using a search engine as powerful as Google.

Built on a cluster of client servers, the core of the distributed architecture is a router that directs communications based on the message content.

The software helps address problems such as information overload, when systems fail because too much information is being processed unnecessarily.

Senior Elvin research scientist, Julian Boot, said Elvin was efficient because it did not need to know the recipient of the information and used a filter to find specific information.

The software used a publish-subscribe model, with users controlling the information they receive.

For example, an investor wanting information about a certain stock could specify the information, such as price or volume movements, they want to receive.

While most systems deliver information based on broad criteria, Elvin allows the servers to do the filtering, reducing traffic on a network, Boot says.

The filter system finds the information and sends it to the relevant person.

Elvin is being used in applications such as instant messaging, network management, distributed gaming, workflow and legacy application integration.

A United States start-up has licensed Elvin as part of its development of an automated network management system. The platform, which runs on Linux, Solaris, Unix and Windows, can receive 20,000 messages a second.

The centre, which is the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) representative in Australia, is also heavily involved in the development of Internet protocol standards for content-based messages with the Internet Engineering Taskforce, upon which Elvin's development will rely.

Barbagallo says that since the launch of Wedgetail venture capitalists had begun to take notice of what the centre was doing.